INTEREST in the Nearer East has increased our desire to know as accurately as is possible the beginnings of the faith and of the various states that have played so important a part in its history. The Arabs themselves have had, from the earliest times, a keen sense for historical tradition and an equally keen desire to preserve that tradition in writing. There is, perhaps, no people of earlier times that has left us so large an amount of documentary evidence as to its be- ginnings as they have. The evidence, of course, needs sift- ing and sorting according to the canons of criticism we have learned to employ in all such cases. But, this work cannot be done by Oriental scholars alone, whose time is often taken up largely with the philological and literary examination of the texts that have come down to us. It is, therefore, eminently a part of their duty to render these texts accessible to students of history who are not masters of the Arabic language.

Dr. Hitti has undertaken this task in connection with the record of one of the earliest Arab historians whose work has been preserved. Since its publication in 1866 by Pro- fessor de Goeje, al-BaJadhuri’s " Futuh al-Buldan" has been recognized as one of our chief authorities for the period during which the Arab state was in process of for- mation. This task of translating has not been a simple one : proof is that the attempt has not been made before this. The style of al-Baladhuri is often cryptic and unintelligible. This is perhaps due to the fact that the work, as it has reached us, is a shortened edition of a much larger one which, though existent up to the seventeenth century, has not been found in any of the collections of manuscripts to which we have access. In its present form, the work men- tions often men and matters that probably were treated of in the longer recension, but of which now we know nothing. Dr. Hitti’s translation is, therefore, in a certain sense also, a commentary and an exposition. As such, I trust that it will be found useful to Orientalists as well as to students of history. His fine sense for the niceties of Arabic expres- sion has often enabled him to get through a thicket that is impenetrable to us Westerners.

RICHARD GOTTHEIL. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, JANUARY, 1916.

Table des matières

PAGE FOREWORD INTRODUCTION

Arabic Historiography with Special Reference to al-Baladhuri. i

PART I ARABIA

CHAPTER I Al-Madinah 15

CHAPTER II The Possessions of the banu-an-Nadir 34

CHAPTER III The Possessions of the banu-Kuraizah 40

CHAPTER IV Khaibar 42

CHAPTER V Fadak 50

CHAPTER VI Wadi-1-Kura and Taima’ 57

CHAPTER VII Makkah 60

CHAPTER VIII The Wells of Makkah 77

CHAPTER IX The Floods in Makkah 82

CHAPTER X At-Ta’if 85

CHAPTER XI Tabalah and Jurash 91

CHAPTER XII Tabuk, Ailah, Adhruh, Makna and al-Jarba’ 92

CHAPTER XIII Dumat al-Jandal 95

CHAPTER XIV The Capitulation of Najrin 98

CHAPTER XV Al-Yaman 106

CBAPTER XVI TJmin 116

CHAPTER XVII Al-Babrain 120

CHAPTER XVIII Al-Yamamah 132

CHAPTER XIX The Apostasy of the Arabs in the Caliphate of abu-Bakr as-Siddik .’. 143